GREENFIELD — The March 20 City Council meeting will tackle two hot topics: a proposed public library and zoning proposals associated with a great horse trade for library votes between Council President Karen “Rudy” Renaud and At-Large Councilor Isaac Mass.
Most other business that must come before the council this month has been set aside to a special meeting the following week, March 27. This includes the conversation on entering a 10-year agreement with Leyden for providing it with fire services.
The decision was made at a Council Committee Chairs meeting Tuesday evening in City Hall.
The proposed deal between the councilors on the two-sides of the library debate is over whether it makes sense to build a new $19.5 million public library with the help of a $9.4 million state grant that must be acted upon no later than April 30.
The deal exchanges a positive vote on the library for changes in zoning laws that Mass sees fostering commercial development.
The zoning changes call for the removal of the majority of the French King Highway overlay district, which would allow for fast food and take-out restaurants along with gas stations. It also relaxes major development review guidelines that generally limit how big of a store can come into the city and where.
The loudest critic of the deal has been “sprawlbuster” and Greenfield resident Al Norman, who has been chief voice against a big box stores like a Walmart in the city. He has called it a “hostage deal,” analogous to the national rhetoric around a border wall to re-open the federal government; neither Renaud nor Mass — nor the primary backers of a new library — have seen it this way.
Before the City Council meeting, the Greenfield Planning Board will hold a public hearing on the proposed zoning changes on March 12.
Included in the zoning changes is a third, alternate suggestion brought forward by At-Large Councilor Ashli Stempel. The zoning change calls for the rezoning of the French King Highway overlay to industrial instead of commercial.
Stempel sees this as a way to bring better paying jobs to the community. Mass, while he likes the idea of a mixed-use zone that can allow for both, said supporting the industrial re-zoning as a “poison pill” for his proposed deal with Renaud. While the Planning Board, a councilor or a citizen could initiate the process for rezoning the area as mixed-use, the process couldn’t be completed before the March 20 meeting.
If the council wanted to push off the vote to April, it would have to vote before April 30 when the Massachusetts Board of Library Commissioners grant must be accepted or lost. the grant would cover roughly half the cost of a new library.
On March 20, the council will first take up the vote on the library before the vote on the zoning changes.
Councilors at the committee chairs meeting offered some discussion on whether it made more sense to do the zoning vote before the library vote. Renaud noted if either side doesn’t get what it’s looking for it could file a motion for reconsideration — but the deal all along has been presented on the basis of a good faith bargain.
“We just have to trust we’re all grown adults,” Stempel said.
You can reach Joshua Solomon at:
jsolomon@recorder.com
413-772-0261, ext. 264